Career Banker vs PE
I'm currently at a mid tier BB. What exactly are the pros and cons of between a career banker and PE? Thanks in advance.
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We had dozens of threads about that, don't be a lazy fuck
The search function on WSO is horrendous. Only one thread pops up and it's not even that informative.
If you could link a couple I'd highly appreciate it, thanks.
Grinch looking ass
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Banking: higher average / median comp
PE: higher comp ceiling
/ end of discussion. Top PE partners take home more than top bankers by a wide margin. Also wayyy tougher to get to senior partner than senior MD and your sick LBO modelling skills have zero bearing on your ability to do so
What about WLB?
Obviously making MD and partner are involved with politics, but would you say there are less politics involved in making MD and its more about just grinding it out? And then vice versa in PE?
Hot take:
Career banker: More prestige for family and friends outside finance, at cocktail parties, at family christmas parties
Because the average person knows Morgan Stanley and Citi, they don't know Apollo and KKR. They'd think Citi is more prestigious than Carlyle
It's only a good take if you're thinking ego.
OP (I assume) is thinking more about $
Average person could also not differentiate between Chase branch banking and JPM or Morgan Stanley Wealth Managment and Morgan Stanley IB. Let’s even put GS operations vs. IB.
Interns be like yeah I could easily work 80 hour weeks for the majority of my career, anyone that cant is weak
That's true but i think "hedge fund manager" or "partner at an investment firm" sounds more prestigious than "MD at Citi"
to WSO, yea ofc. To grandma, i honestly don't know. 'Partner at investment firm' sounds wayyyy too broad and kinda sus honestly, plenty of crypto scammers call themselves that
Interested
The advice I've gotten when applying to internship roles is just do whatever you're interested in most. Advising vs investing is very different. When I was applying for internships I applied to both sides, but then decided which one I wanted and eventually only ended up taking interviews from those.
That’s one way of thinking about it, although in banking you aren’t actually advisor until at least the VP level — which by that point you’ll probably have developed new priorities in life so the question of investing vs advising has to be better understood within that context.
The reality of the junior world is that it made more sense when things were less dynamic and more predictable. Because of how unpredictable the future is today, the probability that spending a decade working to become a PE partner or IB MD will materialize is substantially lower, such that the benefits now are much lower but the costs are the same.
I really like this take- thanks for the reply. Having worked on both sides in internships, I feel that even though the work done at a lower level is more basic/comparable, the environment was different. The goal is either lets help this client in the best way possible or lets drill deep to really understand why we want to invest in this. Although, as an intern they gave me extra opportunities to get feel for this by letting me sit in on extra meetings, coffee chats, etc.
Curious, why'd you choose IB over PE?
What did you like / dislike versus the others?
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